The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns. . . .

1. The only "military weapons" that are affected by this are old M-1 Garand 30-06 rifles used in the CMP program, available to collectors mainly. No other US-made military rifles are being imported. And more importantly, how is this semi-automatic rifle functionally different than any semi-automatic deer hunting? The only difference that I know is that these old Garands tended to be pretty heavy. I know of no cases when any imported US-made military weapon has been used in a crime.

2. The only "corporate" registration I'm aware of is for Class III (machine guns) weapons. I've never known an individual to use a corporation to register a handgun or other firearm to bypass a background check. Corporations are used (primarily) to obtain fully-automatic machine guns, as they are usually out of the price range of most citizens (minimum of $20,000 each). Yes, when registered to a corporation any officer is allowed to posses the machine gun, but my understanding that at the point that the transfer occurs there has to be a NICS check for the person actually picking up the gun. What happens under current law is that if a gun is registered to a corporation, then anyone who is an officer in the corporation would be allowed to use the gun I don't see how he can make this change without these rules without congressional action. I know of no case where someone who was barred from getting a gun was able to obtain a gun through the mechanism that the president is pointing to. No crime has occurred as a result of this loophole.

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Why is nobody talking about the fact that the EEOC / Obama admin is busy suing companies who use background checks on job applications. They argue that because blacks are disproportionately represented, its discriminatory.

Congress unfortunately lacks the will or fortitude to stop his unconstitutional executive orders, just as the GOP House leadership refuses to defund Obamacare. I am growing to understand the apathy I've heard from so many, i.e. feeling that their voice isn't heard by those they helped vote into office, so why bother voting, etc.

I haven't seen any gangs go to the trouble of paying an attorney to create an NFA trust, they ignore the law anyway. They trade drugs for machine guns, explosives, grenadea & anything else they want in Mexico, so why does Obama or anyone else think they can't smuggle guns into the U.S. like they do drugs, people, etc.?

Once again, we see the gun control advocates restricting only the law abiding with prohibitions that will have zero net effect on criminal misuse of firearms. It's all about the "we've got to do something" lemming mindset.

'...extremely stringent gun controls that were effectuated by a police state apparatus providing stringent enforcement. So successful was that regime that few Russian civilians now have firearms and very few murders involve them. Yet, manifest success in keeping its people disarmed did not prevent the Soviet Union from having far and away the highest murder rate in the developed world.In the 1960s and early 1970s, the gun‐less Soviet Union’s murder rates paralleled or generally exceeded those of gun‐ridden America.While American rates stabilized and then steeply declined, however, Russian murder increased so drastically that by the early 1990s the Russian rate was three times higher than that of the United States. Between 1998‐2004 (the latest figure available for Russia), Russian murder rates were nearly four times higher than American rates. Similar murder rates also characterize the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and various other now‐independent European nations of the former U.S.S.R.'

I know little of this subject (corporate auto weapons) but wish to point out I think this might affect those gun stores that rent automatic weapons to people for use on their on-site shooting range. Those weapons, I should think would be registered to corporations and the EO a direct attack on their owners.

The purpose of Obama's second executive order is NOT to close any sort of background check "loophole." Its real purpose is to prevent ALL citizens from acquiring what are commonly called Class III firearms (e.g., full auto, suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and the like).

I recently acquired a Class III device, so I know how the system works. It is perfectly legal under federal law for law-abiding private citizens to own machine guns, silencers, short-barreled rifles, and sawed-off shotguns provided they comply with the provisions of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA-34). (Most people don't realize this, and assume that it is simply illegal to own a machine gun aka a full-auto firearm.) The purchaser must submit paperwork to the BAFTE and pay a $200 transfer tax to the Treasury. The purchaser must not be legally disabled from owning a firearm, e.g., not a convicted felon, etc.

In order for a citizen to purchase a Class III firearm also known as an NFA-34 firearm, he must complete and submit to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives the agency's Form 5320.4.

The form is online at http://www.guntrustlawyer.com/atf-f-5320-4.pdf.

Part 17 of this form is the Law Enforcement Certification to be signed by the chief law enforcement officer in the applicant's jurisdiction. It could be the chief of police of the city or town in which the applicant lives, the sheriff or district attorney of the county in which the applicant lives, or the chief of the state police or state attorney general of the state in which the applicant lives. The LEO certifies that he has "no information indicating that the transferee will use the firearm or device described on this application for other than lawful purposes." The LEO also certifies that he has "no information that the receipt or possession of the firearm or device described in item 4 would be place the transferee in violation of State or local law."

The trend over the past few decades has been that in larger metropolitan areas, the LEOs simply do not believe that private citizens should even be allowed to own Class III firearms, law and clean criminal history be damned, and thus simply will not sign off on Section 17. It doesn't have anything to do with whether the applicant himself is currently under criminal investigation, or whether he has been identified by the police intelligence unit as a member of a criminal street gang, or whether he's known as the town drunk with a history of reckless conduct, etc. The refusal to sign off on Part 17 simply reflects the LEO's own anti-firearm bias, and is clearly a misuse of LEO's authority. The form is not asking the LEO "do you think that the applicant should be allowed to own the firearm in question?" It is simply asking whether the LEO has any specific information about the applicant indicating that he would use the weapon for an unlawful purpose. The refusal by anti-gun LEOs to sign off on Part 17 has been a stumbling block to law-abiding citizens obtaining Class III firearms.

The way to get around the stumbling block is to form a corporation, LLC, trust, or some other separate entity which actually purchases the gun. In my case, I have legal training so I formed a trust using a template I already had on my computer. I appointed myself trustee and settlor, and one of my adult sons as the beneficiary since he will someday inherit the firearm. Using a corporate entity to purchase the firearm obviates the necessity of obtaining the signature of an LEO in Part 17 of the AFT Form 5320.4. It does NOT, however, allow the transferee to bypass the background check. I still had to submit my information to the BAFTE so that they could conduct a background check on me prior to their approval of the transfer. It simply means that I do not require a signed permission slip from someone who fundamentally disagrees with the law in the first place.

Obama shares the same anti-gun sentiment and simply does not believe that citizens should be allowed to own Class III firearms. (Deep down, Obama does not rreally even believe that private citizens should be allowed to own firearms.) Obam knows that he lacks the political clout to amend the National Firearms Act of 1934, so he does an end run around Congress by signing an executive order in true dictatorial style. And he does so with the full knowledge that compliant media such as AP, with its well-documented anti-2nd Amendment bias, will deliberately distort the issue to make it appear that Obama is simply tightening up background checks, closing some imaginary "loophole." The truth is that Obama's executive order combined with the anti-gun trend of big city LEOs will effectively gut the rights of the people to keep and bear NFA-34 arms.

The issue with CORP ownership of Title II, not class three, controlled weapons is that a corporation can be sold including all assets and transfer of NFA weapons owned by the corporation can be transferred without any background check on the new owners. I have no source of information that such transfers have taken place with criminal intent and use of the firearms resulting.I agree that any transfer of ownership of corporate owned NFA should be subject to the standard FBI background check on all corp principals who have access to the NFA.

"The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms."

Not to be a Pollyanna, but I am wondering if they (the executive branch) mightn't exempt the CMP from repatriating M-1s and selling them.

After all, one must belong to the CMP, provide proof of firearm responsibility (DD-214, range certification, membership in a gun club", etc.) and *still* go through the federal background check.

Would love to see one of those winky-less members of the WH press corpse ask Obama specifically about the impact on the CMP.